this vulgar handiwork of time

 

Blue Notes Soliloquy by Elaine Weiner-Reed

the cigarette butt gets charred in his fist,
his belt sneaks out of a loop
penetrating the orifices of the wind.

she complains of the food not cooked well,
to hell with the homie, since the mad uncle of
KFC is so hypnotic, handing out lollipops,
but not to the random connoisseur sitting
at the roadside, muttering abuses of
disproportionate shapes and sizes.

where there is sanity, there are decapitated
fingers tapping on lurid screens, lapping to
the other side 5 kms away, 100 meters are
too desperate, after all.

who wouldn’t want to suck the lactating nipples
of this evening, and
bite into the rhetoric flesh of silence that
encloses this open-to-all soirée.

we are not indelible, nor are we buttressing unsaid
fetishes in our guts, so why bother about it,
shadows won’t question, lights would, but for that
we are left clinging to these lampooned lamp posts.

there is always another evening, let’s keep our end
of the bargain after all,
there is always another evening, let’s stay desolate
once more.

.
Linking it up with Poets United

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Untitled (Public Opinion) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres

.

where do truths come from and where do they go to die?

in this dreary consolation of time, I can see the whirl
of their wheels, and banished desires living on scraps.

if you’d told me of this night two nights back, I’d have believed
but never more.
who’s to say when the flowers droop and colors fall off of the sky?

it’s an inlaid embroidery; intricacy paves the way for simplicity –
I see babies cooing to each other, and people fucking their lives up
in search of one consoling hand. I see men showing junk, and women
trying to hide their breasts, both from an obsolete sense of loss.

where do lives begin and where do they fall over?

in this nest of living and unliving, dying and undying,
I carve lines into the air, of desire, of an unintended mirth
and we laugh. We laugh, we weep, but we just can’t hold each other.

we just can’t hold each other up anymore.

things fall apart.
my lips bleed, my body’s sore and the sour taste lingers in my mouth.
things fall apart.

.

For “A Skyflower Friday” writing prompt at With Real Toads.

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Book Review: Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sons and Lovers by David Herbert Lawrence is a profound novel about love if explained in a few words. And yet, you can’t limit it to that. Published in 1913, it received a lukewarm response but today, it is considered a classic masterpiece by many. How the book discusses the complexity of love and relationships and draws a contrast between nature and industry is, according to me, quite exceptional!

The story begins with a landscape of a mining town, urging the readers to see everything as it is. The third party omniscient narration first talks about Mrs. Gertrude Morel, who has married a miner, someone who is downward in caste to her people. Morel is an illiterate, an alcoholic and a simple-minded man, with violent outbursts towards his wife and kids. Taking it fast forward, Mrs. Morel has three sons(William, Paul, and Arthur) and a daughter(Annie), all of whom despise their father in their own ways, with a slight exception of the youngest boy, Arthur.

The mother who has never found happiness from her husband strives to look for it in her sons. In some way, she takes first the eldest, William, and then, the second eldest, Paul, as her lovers. (The story is not about incest, but rather about deep-rooted feelings of companionship and adoration)

But her love for them makes all their lives crumble. The two sons could never love any woman through and through and that is what makes them miserable and suicidal. Paul (a character envisaged in similarity to the author himself) derives a bond of spiritual love with a farmer’s daughter, Miriam, who worships him. They have a relationship of mind, intellect and spirit. Paul also begins a passionate affair with a married woman, Mrs. Clare Dawes, who stays away from her husband. The harder they may try, they could never have Paul as a whole person.

Paul’s relationship with his mother is mingled with love and its produce, hatred. Sometimes, they are lovers enjoying a visit to different places and sometimes, they are distant to each other, brooding in their own worlds. Mrs. Morel could not approve of her sons’ lovers, her sons can’t devote themselves to their lovers, the lovers can never have enough of the sons, and everyone suffers in this overwhelming propinquity.

In the nexus of these characters, Lawrence brings forth a story of coming of age, of family, of love and hate, of relationships that are indefinable.

Some thoughts about the book:

1. The book was quite scandalous on its release, with its open portrayal of sex and related symbolic imagery. Lawrence has a knack for depicting the sensual moments in the form of colors, textures, and flowers, depicted in the scene.

2. The three lady characters: Mrs. Morel, Miriam, and Clara, form a circle around the male protagonist, Paul.
Mrs. Morel is the conscientious mother who has devoted her life and love to her sons. She derives happiness from Paul’s successes in painting. Paul succeeds for his mother. They have a bond deeply rooted in their need for each other. They make a whole, which no one is allowed to penetrate and if one does, one can’t stay for long. This relationship is naturally attributed to The Oedipean complex.

3. Miriam is my favorite character in the novel, and the most intricately structured, according to me. She is shy, introvert and deeply religious and finds first intellect and then, a love that goes beyond the realms of the world, in Paul. She is someone who lives for the afterlife much more than the life itself. Paul describes her love as, “You don’t want to love-your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren’t positive, you’re negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you’ve got a shortage somewhere.”

4. Clara is a feminist, and yet, she is confused in her resolve. She is stuck between her husband and her lover, Paul. Paul’s relationship with Clara is that of passion, which withers with time. Clara is not the main character, but you can’t ignore her either.

5. The writing is impeccable; the sentences are short and poetic. The words weave living and breathing images and the complexity of love is so finely articulated in these pages. This is a book which tends to get boring in between due to repetition, but that repetition is also necessary. It is quite long and is intended to be read patiently. It took me about 8-9 days for reading it.
Quoting an excerpt from the novel,
“To know their own nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood which carried them always, gave them rest within themselves. If so great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify them altogether with itself, so that they knew they were only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass blade, its little height, and every tree, and living thing, then why fret about themselves?”

Why indeed!

I would recommend this book to patient readers, who love the art of language and the need for the understanding of love and relationships. It is quite a depressing read, and that must be taken into account before you decide to hurl yourself into this story.

View all my reviews

Liberate me: A 100 Word Story

The train has stopped and I mingle with the crowd coursing out, journeying up to the street where all go their own way. I am on the look out for a library.

I sing:

“Wandering here in the wild
shadowed by the bright day
I look here, there, I’m a child,
liberate me from this dark play”

There is no one I encounter on my path; the sunlight pierces my eyes and I am going blind. The knowledge of truth is out of my reach.

And this is when I touch upon the undeniable sprout of insanity growing in me.

.

Written in consideration of Friday Fictioneers’ Weekly Prompt.

Image copyright: Randy Mazie

a dead man in life

“43,099,200 minutes- the freedom that comes with the realization that death is inevitable”, by Dan Mansutti

i saw a grave of a mother and daughter buried side by side

and the dead woman asked me for a dance, I had to oblige,

she saw the living through my eyes, and touched my life line

.

she had her mouth widened into an unabating smile,

a beaming mien that sculpts her into a haunting device,

she susurrates words of the olden times, her garb contrived

from plant vines, her pearl necklace shriveling, her bones cackling

.

she has lived after death, to nurture the venom of her spite,

her dead dreams are where the worlds collide, the living dies

and the dead is alive, she hands me a note engraved on earth,

she buries me in her grave, and I evanish from her sight

.

into the realm of the living, but still dead when I am alive,

or alive only in death, her voice subsides, I decimate my life line

.

Image source

Inspired from dVerse Poetics.